The Old Man and the Street

John and his father put two coats of semi-gloss finish on the floors today. When they first came over for an estimate, they asked what kind of finish we wanted. Not knowing much of anything about floor finishes, we told them that we wanted the most durable finish possible. They recommended Swedish Finish as the most durable and long-lasting finish that you can put on a wood floor (that isn’t factory applied, that is). Technically speaking, it’s a “Acid-cured Urethane”, and it dries in a few hours, but takes weeks to finish curing and hardening. The real downside, they pointed out, is that it smells quite a bit, so it’s not something you can really use if you’re going to live in the house while the floors are redone. Since we’re not yet living there, we decided to go with the Swedish Finish (instead of Polyurethane).

They put two coats of semi-gloss finish on today, and screened once in-between coats.

And they weren’t kidding about the smell–we could smell it out on the front sidewalk, and it reeked to high heaven. It smells like a cross between rubbing alcohol, sterno, paint thinner and Vics Vapo-Rub. They were just putting the last strokes on the second coat at about 5:30, so we came back at 10:00PM to check it out and close some of the windows.

In short, it’s beautiful–everything that we had hoped for. And without further ado, here’s the finished product:

To see some before and after comparisons, see the comparison pics.

They finished sanding and screening and put the stain on the floors today. It looks pretty nice, but very muted since there’s no shine to it at all (it’s more matte than a matte finish would be since it’s just raw wood). Here’s the master bedroom with just the stain on it:

Monday’s going to be the day for the finish. Woo.

So, last night we hemmed and hawed and tossed and turned and finally narrowed our choices down to the following stains (Minwax):

• Golden Oak
• Ipswich Pine
• Cherry
• Golden Pecan

I handed this list to John this morning, and showed him a picture of a beautiful floor that M. and I liked from American Bungalow magazine. He recommended that in addition to the above four, we also try out “Colonial Maple” as that seemed to him to be closest to the floor in question.

While I was at work, they “laid out” samples of the stain directly onto our floor in the living room for us to get a feel for how the different stains look. Here’s what it looked like:

From left to right, these are:

• Ipswich Pine
• Golden Oak
• Cherry
• Golden Pecan
• Colonial Maple (Benjamin Moore, not Minwax)

Before seeing the stains on the floor, my favorite was Golden Pecan, with Ipswich Pine as a close contender. M. liked the Golden Oak, with the Ipswich Pine coming in second. But seeing them on the floor, we ruled out Cherry as looking too much like dyed red, and both Ipswich Pine and Golden Pecan as being too light. That left us with the Golden Oak and Colonial Maple. After walking around the stains for a bit, holding lights high and low, and stooping down and standing up, we finally decided that the Colonial Maple brought out the natural coloring of the red oak beautifully (without looking phony or dyed). Here’s a close-up of the winner:

The floors are now almost completely sanded, and they’re about ready to start screening them.